The Loss of One Life

Several things are pressing on my heart as I write this, all involving human lives.

First, I read an article about a little boy born with very marked physical deformities, due to a rare genetic defect, who was born in India and whose parents called him a "curse" and did not want to take him home from the hospital. If they did, they said they would kill him. A Christian family working at the hospital adopted the child who has had several surgeries and who is now two years old. The mom has written a blog about their family experiences. I looked up this disorder on line and found a few cases of it, all of which showed babies who had died or whose lives were terminated in utero because of this disability. What makes us human? Our bodies or our souls? I realize that fear places a huge part in dealing with disability. How can we deal with someone who looks so different? If we can't deal with it, we think others can't as well. Hence, termination (a more pleasant term than abortion which is what termination of pregnancy is).

Then there was another article about a pregnancy crisis worker in Louisiana who found a bottle in the Gulf with a message in it. When she opened it up, she found an ultrasound of a womb containing with it a 6-8 week unborn baby, taken by Planned Parenthood in May of this year, and then another ultrasound of an empty womb, taken a week later. Both ultrasounds were marked with the same initials, indicating the same patient. A note inside the bottle had two sets of initials with a heart around them and a message that read, "We will always love you." The obvious conclusion is that this woman asked for the ultrasounds taken by Planned Parenthood before her abortion and then one week later (in some Southern states, an ultrasound is required by law a week after the abortion), then wrote a note to her baby and signed it with her initials and those of the baby's father. The starkness of the empty womb following the womb with the baby told of what an abortion truly is. The loss of a person. Who was that person who was taken away so young? What would he or she have done?

Whose lives would have changed and matured had those children with disabilities been born? We can never know.

Then, today, I saw on line a troubling story about a four year old child found in Gypsy camp during a drug raid. She is not the biological child of the man and woman whom she was found with and who had five different conflicting stories of how they came by this child. This frightened face of this little girl called Maria is the face of trafficking in children. And I think of how EASY it would be to traffic in children. Have a baby at home without ever going to a doctor, move to an area where you aren't known, and sell the child for drugs or money. No one but God knows the child exists. What awful things could be done to and with this helpless child make one shudder. Evil is the only word for this.

Finally I read a post about a man who finally, after 33 years, came to admit to himself that he was the father of four children, not three. He and a girlfriend had aborted the first one 33 years ago. One of this man's born daughters wrote a moving story to her sibling Jesse who never saw the light of day. What would Jesse have achieved in life? His father regrets not knowing.

What do we do in the face of things like this? We as penitents need to stand for all life, no matter how compromised, no matter how conceived. Prayers, yes. Helping hands. Yes. Whatever it takes to support families in need. We can't plan when we will be there to help. One of our penitents was plunged into the middle of this when her daughter confided in her mom that she was pregnant and had to abort. Our penitent talked to the daughter and offered her all sorts of support except support for the abortion which the daughter and her boyfriend scheduled anyway. However, with all of us penitents praying (Mom asked for prayers), the daughter, in the clinic's waiting room, looked so distraught that her boyfriend said, "You don't have to go through with this if you don't want to. Do you want to go home?" "Yes," she said. That baby girl was born about two months ago. God be praised.

What will the sparing of that one life mean? We shall never know. Only God knows.

One of our penitent brothers tells us how one of his ancestors was born so early that he almost died. If he had, this penitent's father would not have been born and our penitent brother would not be here. God spared his grandfather's life--and our penitent's life, too.

We must always advocate for and pray for life. God creates. God must take home in His time, not ours. Let us pray for all children in danger of death from any means but especially from human violence in any form. And may all abused children and abducted children be brought to safety. Amen.